Television
Island fever
Edward Heathcoat Amory
From Pickwick to Pevsner, from Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour to Three Men in a Boat, Britons have always had a literary appetite for guided tours round their native land. Bill Bryson, an American, is the latest author to benefit from our taste for nation- al narcissism. His Notes from a Small Island, a best-seller in the bookshops, has now been brought to the small screen (ITV, Monday).
I read the book, and loathed it. Mr Bryson is a smug and patronising guide with an eye for the twee, rather than the interesting. After 20 years of living in Britain and travelling round it, he appears never to have left the cosy confines of his imported prejudices. As Sam Weller told 'Stop talking now, class.' Mr Pickwick, `Vether it's worth going through so much, to learn so little, as the charity boy said yen he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o' taste.'
So I settled down to watch the visual ver- sion of his undeserved literary success con- fident of having my own prejudices, concerning Mr Bryson, pleasantly con- firmed. I was disappointed. As televised by Carlton, Mr Bryson's book is better than I had expected. The author himself, in the flesh, confirms all my preconceptions. -Bearded, pot-bellied and with wheels on his suitcase, he tells us how much he likes Britain, and expects us to purr with plea- sure at such condescension from a citizen of the globe's sole remaining superpower. Britain, he implies, may never have found a role, but at least it has a place in the affec- tions of one slightly eccentric American.
Nor have his observations become any more original or incisive on their transfer to the small screen. Soho 'is full of history as well as clip joints'. He visits a Liver- pudlian pub with the enthusiasm of Bill Clinton 'invited to an Ann Summers party'. London's cab drivers 'are without question the finest in the world'. His eye for the telling details remains as myopic as ever. In Liverpool, he notices a plastic palm tree. In London, a blue plaque on the wall of a house where Mozart once stayed. Britain, he opines, has 'more history, enterprise, ingenuity, humour, quirkiness and delight- ful eccentricity' than anywhere on earth. Why, he even enjoys just opening the A-Z map of London and reading out the funny place names. How kind of him to take our funny little country to his heart. Perhaps, I thought, he will be flattened by a huge, red, double-decker, London bus.
There were, however, other things to enjoy along the way. The producers, sensi- bly recognising that their brave transat- lantic protagonist is almost completely lacking in humour, had equipped him with local comedians as regional guides. In Lon- don, Stephen Fry drove Mr Bryson to a cabby's shelter in the actor's own black London cab. The cabbies obliged the cam- eras with a wonderfully grasping discussion on the tipping habits of different nationali- ties, confirming everything we have always suspected about the conversations that go on in those funny green lean-tos round the capital. In Liverpool, Alexi Sayle was cho- sen as the guide, but seemed rather sub- dued, perhaps depressed by Mr Bryson's relentlessly downbeat assessment of his hometown, as a quaint but irredeemably run-down backwater. It was, implied the programme, like city like nation, possessing a wonderful past and precious little future. Thanks in part to these collaborators, I enjoyed this vicarious trip round my native land. A firm devotee of foreign holidays, it is good to be reminded that a domestic vacation need not necessarily mean a week on a freezing beach with bucket, spade and grandparent. By the end of the first half- hour programme, I was even warming to woolly-jumpered Mr Bryson, crossing his arms quickly across his stomach when he feared that the camera was capturing his anatomy from an unflatteringly low angle. Next week, I will be tuning in again, over- coming my embarrassment that an Ameri- can for whom I have no respect has managed to teach me even a little about Britain.
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